Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque red brown, with handles in a mixture of opaque turquoise blue and opaque yellow; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Uneven horizontal rim-disk; cylindrical neck; narrow rounded shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body, tapering upwards; convex bottom; two large vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration; one higher than the other. A mixed turquoise blue and yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another yellow trail applied to neck together with a turquoise blue trail, overlaid on the yellow; both wound in a spiral around upper body, tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern with alternate upward and downward strokes;both ending in swirls on bottom. Body intact, but almost half of rim-disk missing and most of one handle; slight dulling and pitting, and patches of brown enamel-like weathering.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art